Chasing Excellence Name Your Mattering Project & Find a Path to a More Meaningful Life (w/ Rebecca Goldstein)
11 snips
Feb 26, 2026 
Rebecca Goldstein, philosopher and novelist and author of The Mattering Instinct, explores the human need to justify our own worth. She maps four mattering strategies and tells how projects shape lives. Conversation covers how projects form, shift, and can transform harmful paths into meaningful ones. Short, thought-provoking, and practical.
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Mattering Projects Turn Longing Into Purpose
- Mattering projects are the strategies people create to satisfy the mattering instinct.
- A successful mattering project gives a person coherence, purpose, and relief from existential despair in their own eyes.
Pick-Up Artist Example Of A Mattering Project
- Goldstein recounts meeting a pick-up artist in a hotel lobby as a clear example of a mattering project.
- The man's project (picking up women) functioned to justify his self-attention even if it masked deeper longings.
Frank Mink's Transformation From Hate To Repair
- Frank Mink transformed from a neo-Nazi skinhead to an activist who counsels others away from hate.
- His shift came from prison bonds with Black inmates and later a Jewish employer who treated him kindly, undermining his old ideology.
